Opportunities in Proximity. Introducing: Opprox

Let’s face it. The online world of shopping and purchasing items is a continually changing, and evolving beast. On top of that, there is a multitude of websites, email lists, and apps designed to help people save money. However, at this point it’s rather difficult to sift through the cluttered collection of these “resources” and determine which of them work best for us, or which of them are truly relevant.

Opprox is innovative, and a fresh take on mobile apps designed to inform users of local deals, promotions, and savings from retailers to restaurants and more. The mantra of Opprox stems from the phrase: Opportunities in Proximity. This means that Opprox will utilize your smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device’s location to make you aware of promos, and deals closest to you.

For consumers, this means that they no longer need to dig, and scroll through endless promotions, and coupons while maybe finding offers, and items they are interested in. With Opprox, they will be shown the content that is geographically relevant to their location, and with user feedback can select which businesses, and brands they are most interested in.

For Kingston Ontario’s business community – and soon others as the app continues to grow in popularity, and success – it means, that now local business owners can participate in a much-needed step forward in interactive marketing tactics. Opprox uses a rather new, and rapidly growing method of direct marketing called Geo-Targeting. In a small, closely knit economic ecosystem such as ours, new and emerging marketing strategies of the “big city world” can make a profound impact, in a very positive way.

Picture every prospective shopper walking around Kinston’s beautiful and diverse downtown sector while trying to decide where they would like to go shopping, enjoy an excellent dinner.

Now, envision them each using this app, and receiving updates from their favorite venues, and being able to effortlessly share this content with their friends through social media. The result is a more robust, and streamlined method of reaching prospective customers on their terms.

Opprox’s UI (user interface) is an incredibly simple and well designed radial-style menu, giving the user a choice of four categories: Food, Lifestyle, Entertainment, and Health/Wellness. It’s incredibly easy to navigate, and once you get cruising around in Opprox, the cool features unveil themselves.

Once you select your category, the layout is best described as something similar to a news feed. Simply scroll around as you would in your Facebook or Twitter feed(s) until you find an ad that catches your eye. Once you select an offer, you are taken to a profile page of sorts for the business you have selected.

An example of a business’s offer/profile “page” in Opprox. Users can share it with their friends, and also directly contact the business with their phone seamlessly

From there, you can do some pretty cool things, such as sharing the ad on social media with your friends. A feature that really stands out for me is the ability to contact directly the business I am checking out. For example, if I am checking out an offer from a pizza place, and I decide I want to cash in on a deal – I can hit a button that will let me immediately call them and place an order. Everything is completely streamlined, and compartmentalized in a simple, and user-friendly layout.